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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28471686">golden morning spent in the presence of a god</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/snghw/pseuds/snghw'>snghw</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>ATEEZ (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(good tho), Alternate Universe - Gods &amp; Goddesses, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Author Is Sleep Deprived, M/M, Mention of blood, One Shot, also yes hongjoong is who i am inside, but v v v light, i think thats what these r called, this is basically me loving seonghwa and needing it being put in written form</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 01:14:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28471686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/snghw/pseuds/snghw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The stranger is looking at him, like something falling, like he wants to catch him, like he knows how.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>golden morning spent in the presence of a god</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The pier, an edge eroded into romance-riddled waves and old, man-placed boulders that somehow look like they’d have found their way there without any help. A sort of fate, a sort of inevitable consequence to the pattern of all moving and unmoving things. A sort of a way of saying, <em>we don’t need you, but we don’t renege you. </em>A sort of something brittle.</p><p>With his hand shivering around a paper cup of halfway-stale coffee, Hongjoong moves with the waves in a ballet of immature revenge. The sea slaps the rocks. He moves. The sea stops. He moves again. It’s a balanced plan of outrunning the waves, you see. He’s faster, she matters. Little jabs to prove his right to be is more than a throwaway joke between the gods.</p><p>There’s a splatter of sunlight-yellow acrylic paint on his right sneaker, and a rip in the hem of his jeans. His jacket’s three sizes too big. It was his father’s, from when the old man still bothered to take morning walks on the beach. He swipes at his nose, takes a sip of bitter coffee, and goes back the way he came, eyes looking through the spaces in the rocks as if he’s playing a word-finding game. Ninety-nine letters and three words to decide your fate.</p><p>A wave splashes against the highest rock, a splatter of saltwater twice his height falling on the concrete before him. It catches the tips of his shoe, the yellow paint now wet. His hands clutch onto the empty cup until it squeezes, useless.</p><p>“Fuck me,” he says when he feels the water bleed into his socks.</p><p>It’s the sort of <em>fuck-me </em>you don’t expect to be answered, because you’re alone on a pier at six in the morning and your hands are cold and it’s winter and your father’s decided to marry at seventy-two years old and move to Hawaii. It’s the sort of <em>fuck-me </em>that’s more of a <em>please-stop-fucking-with-me </em>to the aforementioned gods that still believe they’re the funniest beings in the Universe.</p><p>“I apologize,” comes a voice, sweet, honey, full. “I didn't expect anyone to be here.”</p><p>Hongjoong looks up, vision blurring, anxiety spiking. The cold strikes, then, stabs him in the spine and the soles of his feet, every extremity. His breaths become a pushing of air around, more than anything.</p><p>“What—There. There wasn’t! Where—“</p><p>“Oh,” says the man before him. His eyes are golden. Sunlight-yellow. “I did not mean to scare you.” His lips move oddly, as if his tongue and teeth feel bigger than they are, his eyebrows hidden behind silver hair. White gold.</p><p>“It’s— Okay. It’s okay.” Hongjoong’s mind becomes a jumble of expletives and unnecessary internal yelling. It takes a moment, before he sees the red.</p><p>The stranger is looking at him, like something falling, like he wants to catch him, like he knows how. Hongjoong’s eyes zero in on his hands, his face, his torso, covered by a black shirt, his legs, covered by a too-long, impossibly loose skirt.</p><p>“Your hands,” Hongjoong says, when his voice unlocks the pathway to the outside world. “They’re bleeding.”</p><p>The man takes a moment. Hongjoong stares, until he seems to jump out of his own mind. He regards his hands and arms as if they are somehow wrong, the way a sixteen-year-old does after a growth-spurt.</p><p>“It appears so,” he say.</p><p>“Can I, uh—ask why?”</p><p>He lowers his hand, looks at the sky.</p><p>“There is a high chance one will encounter injury as they break open Hell’s doors, you see.”</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>The sunlight-man smiles, dull teeth and golden eyes, honeysuckle eyelashes touching in happiness and something soft.</p><p>“Seonghwa,” he says. His name feels like the world’s oldest memory. “I was king of this country, now I am emperor of the underworld, supposedly.” He bows like royalty. “Nice to meet you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is something golden, everywhere. Sunlight, honey-sweetened tea, acrylic paint splattered on a shoe that fell from the feet of a man who threw himself to the sea three years after a winter sunrise and an almost-human.</p><p>(Do not panic. Some gods are golden, and their hands warm.)</p><p>(When they've washed away the blood, of course.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is what happens after you haven't read a single page of anything in two months because your brain decided to fuck you up for a while;;; i am also aware this is vague and random, and the fact that i have commitment issues is glaringly obvious buT O H WELL THESE DUDES MAKE ME HAPPY .</p><p>also seonghwa is GOLDEN in SOUL and in EVERYTHING and i LOVE HIm</p><p>if you have questions or wanna talk to me for the purpose of anything really im lonely: <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/snghwatz">twitter</a> &amp; <a href="https://curiouscat.qa/snghw">curiouscat</a>. </p><p>HAPPY NEW YEAR LOVES!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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